ADDRESSES ON ROMANS
Let us go back to the twelfth chapter of Genesis where we find .the account of how God dealt with Abraham-on unconditional promises. There is grace for you! All blessing upon Abraham and his descendants rested on God's promises, and not on what they could do. All God required was that Abraham should believe Him. And what did God promise Abraham? A son in his old age, through whom a great nation was to come, through whom the Redeemer and "the oracles of God" were to be given to a sin~darkened world. All these promises were given on the ground of grace-and grace alone. Then when Abraham asked God, "Whereby shall I know?" (Gen. 15: 8), God told him to build an altar and offer sacrifices. These offerings were pictures of what Christ was going to do on Calvary's cross. God was going to do things because He said He would, not because of what Abraham did. That is what we call promise; it is what we call grace. God also dealt with Israel on that very same ground, even as He promised Abraham that He would. From the time Israel was delivered from Egyptian bondage, until the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, God dealt with His people on the ground of grace. Even though Israel showed themselves to be a stiff ~necked people, still God dealt with them in grace. He gave them manna and quail to eat. and still they murmured and complained. Because they stood dependent on God and because He was dealing with them in grace, He could and did show kindness and bless them in spite of their stiff necks. Then at Sinai God made them a proposition: He showed them what He had done for them, and that they were a self~ righteous people. He said to them something like this: "Suppose you make your relation to me from this time on depend upon your obedience to what I require of you. Since you think you can measure up to My holy standard, try it for yourselves; and My holy law will only reveal to you your great sin and your utter inability to keep My righteous command~ ments." If rash Israel had only known of her sinfulness, she would [Page 111
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